Technology

Google, Bing say 'Argo' for Best Picture Oscar

The Academy Awards winners will be crowned on Sunday night, which means it's once again time for Google (GOOG) to make it's annual, and usually wrong, prediction for the "Best Picture" category. Here it is: Ben Affleck's "Argo."

Guessing Oscar winners correctly is a tough racket, and Google hasn't had much luck in the last few years. For this year's awards, the search leader has simplified its process for guessing: Whichever movie had the highest volume of Google searches is its pick.

By that metric, the best picture of 2012 was the geopolitical thriller "Argo," Google says . Second would be "Les Miserables."

Last year, Google had said the film version of Jonathan Safran Foer's post-9/11 novel "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" would capture the best picture Oscar, and the year prior Google had given "The Social Network" the best odds. Neither took the top spot.

"Argo" is a pretty safe bet, and not just because I marked it to win in IBD's office pool. Microsoft (MSFT) Bing searches also predict it will be the winner, as it captured 34% of the search queries for the nominees. U.K. bookmaker Ladbrokes gives "Argo" a 1-6 shot of winning, the best odds. Ladbrokes says the independent "Beasts of the Southern Wild" is the longest shot, at 200-1 odds.

"Argo" is also at the top of the list for Nate Silver, the statistician who runs the FiveThirtyEight blog at The New York Times. Silver says the hunt-for-Osama-bin-Laden thriller "Zero Dark Thirty" comes in a distant second.

Yahoo (YHOO) has a different theory, however. "Argo" has been getting a lot of searches in the last week because of its DVD release, Yahoo says, but David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook" is still the top-searched film of 2012.